The Age of Melodramatic Miniseries

Book excerpt: Glamour, power, champagne breakfasts in satin sheets--welcome to television's most dazzling and overlooked genre: women-centric melodrama miniseries of the 1980s and 1990s. Decades before Real Housewives, rags-to-riches fantasies depicting strong women overcoming tragedy to take charge of their destinies were a big hit with TV audiences. Reflecting the "greed is good" ethos of the day and encoded with feminist messaging, these glitzy, often camp stories depicted statuesque superwomen facing off with square-jawed men in boardrooms and bedrooms. This book explores the shows that epitomized the prime-time soap era and gave us such memorable scenes as Stefanie Powers trading lovers with her twin sister, Joan Collins fighting Nazis in haute couture and Phoebe Cates demanding, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"